Take torture, for instance. To me it seems insane for us as a nation to engage in torture to elicit confessions from either those we suspect of having committed offenses or even those we're already convinced are guilty.

That's why I applaud The Saginaw News for commending President Obama for banning "torture during interrogations" and wrote that it is part of the "moral albatross that is strangling the U.S."

Think of it: What an interesting image there -- "strangling" -- something worse than torture. Our nation was killing itself by adopting the tactics of those we despise.

I hope that our Michigan senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, see fit to co-sponsor the Lawful Interrogation and Detention Act (S. 147) that would make torture permanently illegal.

Robert Hastings
Bridgeport Township

Change brings loss

Editor, The News:

Saginaw fan support of school athletics is great -- it always has been.

Let's go back a few years to a Thanksgiving Day football game between Arthur Hill and Saginaw High School on Nov. 24, 1949 -- a time when the city was divided by a river, it was East vs. West for bragging rights. A time when the city shut down and the big dinner was served after the game. It was tradition.

Some were happy, some were not with a 13-13 tie, but fans and players shook hands and said "Wait till next year."

Change is inevitable, but I fear we lost something good along the way.

Wes Harding
Saginaw

Brains over hot air

Editor, The News:

Right now, our country has a decision to make in getting out of our financial troubles.

We can either support Obama, who is doing what the best economic brains in the country are all telling him to do, or we can support most of the GOP U.S. senators and representatives who seem willing to do what Rush Limbaugh is telling them to do.

Tough choice, but I am picking brains over hot air. How about you?

Bob Ciaffone
Saginaw Township

Thank Republicans

Editor, The News:

Seven years of Republicans rubber-stamping anything that Bush wanted has given us the deficit we have today.

Bush was given a budget surplus in 2000 and left with a huge deficit at the end 2008.

Now we will harvest the fruits of his tax cuts for the wealthy and failure of Greenspan's Fed policy in 2002-03 of leaving interest rates very low. This allowed the hedge funds to do large leveraged buyouts greatly increasing stock prices that were not based on earnings.

These events now are causing major social changes as shown in the last election. The prisons are overflowing and states are stepping up the release of inmates. States do not have the money to fund prisons. The court system is under pressure not to send anyone to prison. The next events of lawlessness will occur when people have no employment and need to eat. This leads to events like one that occurred recently in Saginaw where a person killed the homeowner and set up housekeeping as if he owned it. Another example is squatting in foreclosed houses.

Money will not be available to enforce laws, as tax receipts will be dropping.

Our national defense will be reduced severely when we no longer have the money to fund the military operations. Iran, China and Russia, with budget surpluses, are becoming the new leaders.

We are in bondage to these countries as a major world debtor and as such are at the will and mercy of these lenders. All these countries have to do is sell their vast amounts of treasury or Fannie Mae bonds, and our interest rate will go up rapidly.

Our dollar will devalue just as quickly.

Thank the Republicans for pushing us to a second-rate nation.

Donald Ruth
Richland Township

Paralyzed with fear?

Editor, The News:

Let's take a look at a Jan. 22 letter to the editor.

t Bush doubled the national debt.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned in 1939 with a promise that our boys would not be involved in the war in Europe. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he declared war on Japan and Germany, which was justified. The national debt was increased at an amount that has never been matched in inflated dollars since.

Pearl Harbor was a military base, where, according to liberals, deaths cannot be counted because military bases invite attacks. The attack on Sept. 11 was working men and women plus children. So, according to the author's thinking, even Japan should not have been attacked by us.

U.S. deaths during World War II, 295,000. Worldwide, 61 million. I have not found any past condemnations of FDR's actions by the author.

In 1993, Al Gore said George H. W. Bush was inept because he would not attack Iraq, which murdered Kurds and ignored many U.N. resolutions as well as having weapons of mass destruction.

Who said Iraq had WMDs? Clinton's CIA Director George Tenet. Even Clinton was attacked by liberals for not attacking Iraq. Can anyone find any Democrat in power up to 2001 who did not demand an attack on Iraq?

It's like Clinton's war in Serbia. "Don't worry, we will only be there six months." We are still there. I am always amazed it does not bother liberals that Saddam's reign of terror included paying $25,000 to any family member who participated in bombing Western sites, stoning women who looked at men and having his sons rape any woman they saw.

Liberals can't stand having troops in Iraq, but we have had thousands of troops in Europe and Korea for more than 50 years, and they want them there. If we succeed in having a free Iraq, then it would cause the other Middle East dictators to fall, just like a free Europe caused many communist countries to fail.

t Bush overspends.

The president can spend very little money. The U.S. House controls spending. During the two years of Democrat control, Bush vetoed many bills, including the massive $300 billion Farm Bill that supports 3 percent of the population. Congress overrode it.

Did the Republicans spend too much before that? Yes, I agree. But the people wanted more spending, as the Obama election shows.

If Bush's spending bothered the author, then Obama's proposed spending should bother him to the point of being paralyzed with fear.